Twitter adds phone verification for Blue service

San Francisco, Dec 12

Micro-blogging platform Twitter has said that phone verification is required to get a verified blue checkmark to prevent the impersonation of accounts.

Twitter posted a picture on Sunday which mentioned, "Blue subscribers with a verified phone number will get a blue checkmark once approved."

Later, Esther Crawford, the product manager at Twitter, said that the micro-blogging platform added a review step before users are granted a blue checkmark.

Crawford wrote: "We've added a review step before applying a blue checkmark to an account as one of our new steps to combat impersonation (which is against the Twitter Rules)."

On Crawford's tweet, several users asked her their doubts regarding the new changes in the Blue subscription service.

While one user asked: "Will there be ID verification?"

"We don't have ID verification in this update," Crawford replied.

Another wanted to know: "If we already signed up for $8 on iOS, will it stay or increase?"

To this, Crawford replied, "you'll get a price increase notification and can choose to remain a subscriber on iOS or switch to the web --it will be entirely up to you."

Meanwhile, Twitter announced to relaunch of its Blue subscription service with verification on December 12, which would cost $8 for Android users and $11 for iPhone owners per month.

Musk raised the price of the Twitter Blue subscription service from $8 to $11 for iPhone users to keep the 30 per cent cut that Apple takes on revenues from iOS apps on its App Store.

--IANS